Among the Avatar-themed cutest collectible cards turns out to be a formidable little powerhouse.

Magic: The Gathering’s collaboration with Avatar won’t become widely available in the coming days, however following early access events this past weekend, a low-cost green spell has already exploded in price.

From the initial reveals, the earthbending cub garnered significant interest. A creature with stats 2/2 requiring one green and one colorless mana, it includes level 1 earthbending (perhaps the best among the four bending abilities in the set). Its key advantage here is its second ability: Each time a creature is tapped to produce mana, it provides bonus green mana.

At its cheapest, this card was available below $30. Post-prerelease, though, the going rate jumped to nearly $50 and one seller offering priced at sixty dollars. Why are we seeing such high costs for this little creature? Primarily due to the incredible mana acceleration it provides.

When it arrives play, the cub turns a terrain card so it becomes a creature with earthbend. Alongside its mana-doubling effect, while it is not removed, each affected land yields two mana instead of one — plus mana-producing creatures in your control which tap for mana.

An ideal partner to combine with is this one-mana elf, an inexpensive 1/1 that produces G mana. Yet numerous other mana generation creatures in the game. This particular druid is a more expensive alternative with stats 1/3 for two mana in comparison.

Deploying terrain, dorks that generate resources, alongside this card, you can easily get a massive high-cost creature into play within a few turns. The situation escalates out of control by maintaining dominance from that point.

By incorporating a secondary color in this strategy, cards like versatile mana producers work perfectly that can make any color of mana. And something like a useful enchantment creature allows you to put an additional land every round as well as makes every land you control into every basic land type. You can also consider something like the enchantment A Realm Reborn, which for six mana provides all of your permanents the ability to tap and generate one mana of any color — including each creature you have on the board.

The cub might seem overpowered regarding boosting mana production, but how do you win in such a strategy? An often-seen solution is this legendary creature. Its stats are both equal to your land count, and it makes all of your nontoken creatures to be Forests along with their original types. Essentially, each creature in play can produce double green when tapped.

Harmonious Grovestrider is a costly, large threat that thrives with many terrain cards (as with the previous card, P/T are equal to the number of lands you control).

Nissa, Who Shakes the World works perfectly in this deck. Her passive ability makes Forest lands produce extra green. (If you have the cub, that means each one yield three G.) Her plus ability is essentially a form of land animation, adding counters on a land, handy but it isn't redundant with the cub's ability. Her -8 ability, however, renders all of your lands unbreakable and lets you search for your remaining Forests in the deck. Once you trigger this power, it’s pretty much you win.

Badgermole Cub is a must-have for all green Avatar deck focusing on Earthbending. If you dip into red-green, consider Bumi Unleashed. This card features earthbend 4, and when damage is dealt to an opponent, land creatures untap for another attack. Although this card is a fan favorite Commander, the cute little Badgermole Cub will surely stay among the top, possibly the desired card in the collaboration.